Cassiday Schade LLP News

Five current associate judges and 11 lawyers will take the bench in Cook County this summer, after the Cook County Circuit Court’s 252 elected circuit judges selected them to be appointed to serve as associate judges, filling vacancies in local courtrooms until at least next summer.

A University of Chicago student suing the school over anti-male bias built into its sexual assault investigation system is continuing his lawsuit against the school, in which he is demanding $1.35 million, even though the school purportedly dropped its disciplinary action against him, and after he settled with a female student who allegedly triggered the disciplinary action by accusing him of sexual assault.

A high-profile lawsuit brought against an Illinois sperm bank by a white woman who claims she was wrongfully impregnated by a black donor’s sperm is on hold after a federal judge in Chicago granted a motion to stay the case, to allow an Illinois appeals court to decide the fate of a nearly identical lawsuit dismissed from DuPage County court.

A state appeals panel has cut through a complex web of legal malpractice actions brought by a man who had essentially alleged many of his ex-lawyers had conspired with intercity bus operator Greyhound Lines to keep him from suing over his wife’s death in a bus accident 15 years ago. The appellate order upheld a circuit court ruling on the consolidated cases that has involved several Illinois attorneys and more than 25 appeals.

Unraveling what it called a “classic clash of apparently conflicting statutes,” an Illinois appeals panel has ruled the family of a woman who died while her medical negligence lawsuit was pending against a doctor, the University of Chicago Medical Center and affiliates is not blocked by a statute of repose from adding wrongful death claims to the preexisting lawsuit.

Park Ridge homeowners have retained a window of hope in their campaign to hold neighboring Advocate Lutheran General Hospital liable for flooding. After the Cook County Circuit Court dismissed two counts of the homeowners’ class-action complaint, the First District Appellate Court reversed one of those dismissals in an unpublished order issued in December. The issue arose from a Sept. 13, 2008, storm and a subsequent Feb. 12, 2009, class action complaint.